A modest proposal to end big government in the US: Cut the senate in half; that is, have fifty senators (one per state) instead of a hundred. The new senate would be as inept as ever, but we'd be paying for fewer of them.

For humanity Let's replace all economists with astrologers. In terms of prediction, we'd be no worse than before, and textbooks would be a lot more colorful.

Luck Anyone who leaves a dentist's office with the same number of teeth she or he had on entering the office.

Intelligent belief The requirement that all bibles include a sticker that states god is a theory, not a fact. Religion instructors are required to discuss alternatives to god at the start and conclusion of each term.

Comic design A development from creationism and intelligent design, the theory states that the world is so ridiculous that nothing would make any sense unless Bozo the Clown created the universe.

Books are easy to pack; paintings are misery.

Bipolar smoking disorder The positive correlation (quantum mechanics) of person A lighting a cigarette and thus causing person B on the opposite side of the Earth to develop lung cancer (Philips, Ostrow, Belinksi, & Detergent, Proceedings of the 19th conference on medical health, Albany, NY, 2002).

Sick tax New York State charges people without health insurance a tax of over 8 percent on top of hospital costs.

One vivid sentence is worth a thousand platitudes.

Bug:windshield ratio Number of bugs splattered against the windshield per 100 miles of driving. In July 2001, this was zero for Long Island, after several trips north and south on Nichols Road which has broad belts of trees along either side of it.

Are submarine drivers tested for alcohol consumption after a collision?

specialist: Someone who knows nothing about most everything.

Serf: A member of the middle class during the Middle Ages.

The U.S. government Style Manual is long, long out of print. Why is it that I'm not surprised?

Maybe she wasn't the heaviest person he had ever seen, but when the doctor wanted to weigh her, he needed a Richter scale.

Politician: Self-help at public expense.

Why is the "Avis Worldwide Discount (AWD)" only available "in the contiguous United States"?

A woody philosophy: I thicket, therefore I am.

Multiple-choice question: A member from which of the following groups is most likely to seek out swan nests in order to shake the eggs to induce an abortion: (a) pro-choice; (b) NRA; (c) Audubon Society; (d) teenager; or (e) all of these.

Agfa is offering for sale a font CD called "FontFont." This will doubtlessly be followed by other innovative marketing techniques, such as its software package called SoftwareSoftware and its color management system called ColorColor. All this to be available in a special catalog called CatalogCatalog.

In years gone by, Bill Clinton's most important contribution as president will be his having installed pay toilets throughout the White House.

Xenophobia: Humans first, second, third, fourth, etc. If a tree falls in a forest and no person hears it, there's no sound; consequently, if a tree falls on top of and crushes a person and no one hears it, there is no murder. Moral? Deaf people shouldn't walk in forests.

New York State is against euthanasia (and proposes all sorts of anti-euthanasia legislation and briefs); NYS also owns for-profit hospitals; and, so, for NYS no pain is too great in the pusuit of money.

Double standard: If one standard is good, two standards are better. In general, the higher the professed morality, the more the standards.

If Adobe thinks that its Acrobat *.PDF files are so great why does it always supply "paper" license agreements? Nothing pertaining to PhotoDeluxe is printed except its 46-page license agreement.

Formula for the annual income of a politician:

Net income = listed salary minus campaign expenditure

For an elected office which pays $80,000 a year and a campaign which spent $250,000,